On various trips to the Middle East my family has debated the merits of hummus in all its glorious presentations and tastes. Sometimes it’s topped with zattar, other times with greens or a sprinkling of whole chickpeas. But the main dividing line always comes down to tahini: do you include a lot, or a little?

Even at home, we eat a lot of hummus. But after reading this article in Slate, I knew I had to stop buying it. How hard could it be to make hummus? I started to do some research. Turns out there are a lot of opinions about hummus, and people don’t just argue over how much tahini to use. Canned chickpeas or fresh? Paprika or cumin? Tahini or . . . . peanut butter? Really?

I considered my favorite recipe sites: allrecipes.com, mideastfood.com, Ina Garten on the Food Network. But I ended up going with a recipe I found on the Hummus Blog, an easygoing (if opinionated) blog with the slogan “Give chickpeas a chance . . .” If you are using dried chickpeas ($2.49 a pound at Fairway for organic chickpeas) the recipe includes a lot of cranky details, like suggestions to change the cooking water midway through the cooking. As with many legumes, you need to soak and rinse dried chickpeas to get rid of undigestible sugars.

But it’s worth using dried chickpeas – they taste delicious. Eventually. I soaked my chickpeas overnight, then changed the water and soaked them some more. I cooked them for an hour and a half in fresh water with baking soda (I forgot to add it when I soaked them overnight). And then I went out to buy tahini.

“This one’s the best!” the man at Damascus Bakery (195 Atlantic Avenue) told me cheerily, handing me a jar of Al Wadi tahini from Lebanon ($4.75 for a pound, shake the jar before you use the tahini). He rolled his eyes when I told him what I was making. I used Celtic sea salt I bought at the Brooklyn Foodshed (sorry, it was a couple of months ago, I forget how much it cost). I stirred in about two tablespoons of tahini (we are of the less tahini is better school). And I didn’t have a lemon, but I did have half a lime, so I used that. I added garlic and cumin. And after a couple of practice runs, I learned two useful lessons. Put the garlic in the food processor with the cooked chickpeas, so it’s evenly distributed. And add quite a lot of the cooking water, counterintuitive though that seems. The chickpeas soak it right up.

We topped it with za’atar (available at Damascus Bakery, or you can make your own) and olive oil. The bottom line? It’s delicious.

Picture source: jcarrot.org

Brooklyn Heights residents are justly proud of our Promenade overlooking New York Harbor. Cantilevered over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, it offers stunning views of the harbor, the Statue of Liberty, and Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the Manhattan skyline, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. But the origins of the Promenade are somewhat murky, and Henrik Krogius has devoted a great deal of time over the years to interviewing participants and reviewing articles, meeting notes, and hearing transcripts. He brings his efforts together in this slim book, which synthesizes years of research and reprints a selection of articles from the Brooklyn Heights Press and Cobble Hill News dating back to 1976. The book is illustrated with dozens of photographs, documenting the construction of the BQE, the cityscape before the road existed, and the Promenade.

Many people had a hand in the development of the highway, but surprisingly few of them were willing to claim credit for the Promenade. The road was originally intended to be built at one level, like most highways, and to cut through Brooklyn Heights. Robert Moses gets the blame for that proposal, which the Brooklyn Heights Association fought; eventually, the Furman Street route was settled on. The idea of a double decker highway was in the air for quite a while, as the Furman Street route cut through the back gardens of the houses on Columbia Heights.

Krogius describes the development and construction of the cantilevers, and discusses the shape of the supports and their additional function of reflecting sound away from the docs on Furman Street. He eventually concludes about the highway:

Ernest J. Clark, the project’s chief engineer, insisted that the design had been arrived at through trial and error by the team’s collaborative effort. Different ways of supporting the roadoways had been considered and their stresses and looks tested. As Clark recounted it, the cantilever design had evolved.

Krogius uncovers plenty of interesting information along the way. One example: the Promenade was ready and opened before the highway. It’s hard to imagine events happening in that order now. Curiously, no one claims credit for the idea of the Promenade, although there are several candidates, including the owners of the back gardens, and even, though he denied it, Robert Moses. Perhaps that is because, like the idea for the cantilevered highway itself, the Promenade was a good idea that also evolved. As Steven Johnson describes it in his book “Where Good Ideas Come From” some of the conditions needed for creativity are dense networks of people creating and overlapping, exposure to ideas and sharing of information, and the time that ideas or hunches need to mature. All of these factors were present in the years of planning and building the Promenade and the BQE, and the idea developed from a lot of suggestions until it was right there, seemingly obvious, to everyone. The Promenade belongs to all of us, and it is a nice thought that its origin belongs, in some sense, to the residents who preceded us.

Henrik Krogius will be speaking about his book at 6:00 pm on Thursday, March 1, at the Brooklyn  Women’s Exchange, 55 Pierrepont Street. The event is free.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here, and have a post about Mr. Johnson’s book here.

Constant connection and instant communication have embedded speed in our lives. Sten Nadolny’s wonderful novel, “The Discovery of Slowness,” translated by Ralph Freedman, celebrates the opposite: the value of taking one’s time, of stopping to think before you act or speak.

“The Discovery of Slowness,” a historical novel, tells the story of John Franklin, a 19th century Englishman who arose from humble beginnings to become an Arctic explorer and the author of two best-sellers about his trips. Reviled and bullied as a child, John also paid close attention, perfecting an ability to stand or sit still for long hours. He used those hours for thinking things through, trying to understand the perspective of others. (I had to wonder whether he would be treated as autistic, or perhaps Aspergian, if he had lived more recently.) A sympathetic schoolmaster helped him achieve his dream of joining the Navy. As Nadolny tells it, eventually Franklin rose to the rank of captain, survived a first trip to the Arctic, and became governor of the penal colony Van Dieman’s Land. He died, of a stroke, during a return trip to the Arctic.

Nadolny puts the reader inside his character’s brain for much of the novel, and Franklin puts his unusual characteristics to good use. He learned to plan for the unforeseen, and his skill at putting himself in the place of others helped when he was negotiating with Inuits during his Arctic trips. His ability to anticipate orders was uncanny, and saved his ships from rash decisions by more senior officers on several occasions. Nadolny describes his thought process, and the impatience of those around him, in exquisite, tension-inducing detail. Here’s a moment when a party is disoriented in the Arctic:

John ordered the men to build an emergency shelter out of ice plates. Reid made no bones of the fact that he would have preferred to go on simply at a right angle to where they had been walking.

“We’ll stay warm that way, and we’ve got to arrive somewhere.”

“I take my time before I make mistakes,” Franklin countered amiably. He ordered them all to wrap themselves up as warmly as possible and sit around the oil lamp. The muskets were carefully loaded in case a polar bear might drop by.

John crouched and reflected. Whatever the other put forward–proposals, theories, questions–he only nodded and thought some more.

. . . But John still wasn’t ready. There was no reason to end his reflections prematurely, even if death was at the door. Finally he got up. . . . “fire a musket every three minutes, thirty times all told. After that, fire every ten minutes for three hours; after that, once an hour for two days. Please repeat.”

“Won’t we be dead by then, sir?”

“Possibly. But until then we fire. Please confirm.” . . . Just as nobody counted any more on getting an explanation, John said: “The entire ice field is turning around. It’s the only solution . . . “ Four hours later they heard a faint shot in the fog, and then again and again answers to their own shots . . .

This Franklin developed into a gifted leader of men, particularly during the ravages of an Arctic winter. He was also a humane governor of Van Dieman’s Land, ensuring that what was a hierarchical penal colony could begin to transform itself into the Australian state of Tasmania. This is a book that amply repays the reader who takes the time to read, think about, and absorb it.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

For many Jews, the world is and remains a fragile place. Israel is surrounded by enemies, many of whom have vowed her destruction. Intermarriage and secular life have diminished traditional Jewish culture. The Holocaust survivors are dying of old age, and the sense of righteousness their story conveys is in danger of dying with them. The growth of Arab and Haredi populations threatens what many Jews – American and Israeli – think of as Israel’s identity as a modern, secular state.

This uncertainty raises many questions for Nathan Englander, such as: might it ever acceptable for Holocaust survivors to use vigilante justice? Have Jews learned to organize resistance when they need to? What does Jewish guilt mean in a place where a peep show costs $1? What does society owe someone who lost his entire family, and then had to fight to survive? Englander uses the stories in his accomplished new collection “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank,” to illuminate these questions and possible answers to them.

In “Sister Hills” two families settle in the austere but beautiful part of the West Bank known during biblical times as Samaria. In the story, the army takes a father, then a son, then another. Settlers take land. A mother takes a daughter. What happens when we make promises we have no intention of keeping? Englander’s answer is a lot of unintended consequences: a family is torn apart, an ancient olive tree is harmed, a country lives with a deeply resentful minority. In its symmetry “Sister Hills” is a near inversion of “The Gift of the Magi,” except that instead of giving, its characters take.

In the title story, recently published also in The New Yorker, two couples, one secular and living in the United States, one Chasidic and living in Israel, reunite in the secular couple’s Florida home. A stilted reunion becomes a jovial discussion ranging from how to manage life with a house full of daughters (Israelis) or one son (the Americans). The couples get high together, and run outside into a Florida rainstorm. Most crucially, the couples play what they call the Anne Frank game, the Righteous Gentile game: who will hide us if the need arises? And before they know it, the day has veered into dangerous marital territory. We read what we need to into the Frank family’s story because, just as we do when we talk about love, what we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank is love, and trust, and life itself.

The other stories in the collection, published today, are similarly thought-provoking. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics  – for people who hate numbers – here.

Well, there’s nothing like it.  The Beastie Boys‘ Paul’s Boutique didn’t sound like any record that came before it, or anything since.

I remember buying it when it first came out, but I don’t remember why I bought it.  I liked a bunch of songs on their debut album, Licensed To Ill. But it seemed like a novelty album, and it’s appeal was… I’d describe it as douche-y.  Also their style was very derivative of Run-D.M.C.‘s (understandable as they were a big influence and both groups were produced by Rick Rubin).

I think I may have heard “Hey Ladies” and thought that they didn’t sound like they’d progressed too much. But the music was so much… thicker. I was intrigued.  So I picked it up.  When I first listened to the record, I was puzzled.  What the hell?  I know a lot of other people had the same experience.

But every time I came back to the album, I liked it a little bit more. I was always catching new references in the lyrics and in the music.  In fact, there is an entire website that explains every reference and lists every sample.  And there’s a great book about the album that tells you just about everything about how it was made – it’s part of the excellent 33 1/3 series.  You couldn’t make an album like this today without a multi-million dollar sample-clearance budget and probably an army of lawyers.  I mean, they sampled The Beatles! You just couldn’t do that today, but back then, there were no rules about it.  It was a cool era: other hip-hop LPs like Public Enemy‘s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back and de la soul‘s 3 Feet High and Rising were similarly dense with samples, but no one can (legally) release albums like those today.  It’s interesting to note, though, that this album was about the time where hip-hop’s mainstream started losing interest in the Beasties.  On Licensed, they were signed to Def Jam and were managed by RUSH (both owned by Russell Simmons).  On this album, they left New York for L.A., ditched Def Jam and signed to Capitol (who didn’t really have a hip-hop team in place), left RUSH management, and moved on from producer Rubin to The Dust Brothers.

Today, it’s one of my favorite albums, and unlike Licensed To Ill, it’s aged really well, and still sounds ahead of its time.

Source: No Expiration - a blog about timeless music
http://noexpiration.blogspot.com/2012/01/back-in-day-beastie-boys-pauls-boutique.html

Admission is $20 for a family of four ($5 each additional); and $10 for CAFF or Brooklyn Historical Society members. The meeting point is BHS at 128 Pierrepont Street.

Pre-registration is required. For tix, click here.

Source: Brooklyn Heights Blog » Brooklyn History
http://brooklynheightsblog.com/archives/35501

Find your Missed Connection at the NY Transit Museum on Valentine’s Day!

*Free admission to Love-in-Transit Party for all would-be romantics
*NY Times Metro writer Alan Feuer reads poems based on Craigslist Missed Connections posts
*Artist Sophie Blackall has a slideshow and will sign copies of her book Missed Connections: Love, Lost and Found
*Snap a photo in the token booth
*Food (Brooklyn Brewery) and Music (You Bred Raptors?)

Where: NY Transit Museum, Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn Heights

When: Tuesday, February 14, 6-8 pm

Every once in a while I read a book that is so good I cannot bear to put it down, but at the same time I cannot bear to finish it because then it will be done and I will never be in suspense again. “The Stranger’s Child,” a new book by Alan Hollinghurst, is one of these books.

The book tells the story, in five parts spanning nearly a century, of two families, the Sawles and the Valances, and two houses, the Sawles’ suburban home Two Acres, and the aristocratic Valances’ country pile Corley Court. Cecil Valance visits the Sawles at Two Acres, where two of the family’s three children, Daphne and George, have fallen in love with him. He writes a poem in Daphne’s autograph book; the poem, a paean to rural England, long outlives him, as Cecil is killed in the Great War. Each of the book’s parts centers around a love affair, or several, and the four later parts consider mysteries spawned in the first.

The book is a comedy of manners, with many telling details—a character is put down because he attended a red brick university; a memoir with a hand-written dedication is discovered 30 years later in a second-hand bookstore; a Victorian trophy house becomes a later generation’s hideous pile, broken up into rooms to let, its gardens subdivided for tract houses. Characters peer out from the closet, sometimes but not always retreating into it and firmly slamming the door. A minor event, glancingly mentioned in a letter or memoir, is interpreted as the key to a character by a later generation.

The two houses keep reappearing. So does the shade of Cecil Valance, which wreathes through the lives of all the other characters. Paul Bryant, introduced in the third part, becomes Cecil’s unlikely literary biographer. But in writing about Cecil, Paul upends all the family myths and threatens to unearth family secrets. Paul forgets that his subjects are people, not characters, so he gets everything all wrong–or does he?

“The Stranger’s Child” is exquisite, complex without being cumbersome. The Sawle and Valance families grow together into a large vine, the roots deep and the leaves blurring the outlines of the structure beneath. The younger characters try to untangle the history, while the elders prefer to keep their histories to themselves. Everyone’s efforts give the book its charm, and whether anyone succeeds gives the story its suspense. The book leaves a lot up to the reader, which is part of its appeal. Let us know your interpretation in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

Hitler rose to power in Germany in 1933. In that same year, Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as President of the United States, and in due course he appointed a new United States Ambassador to Germany. After several false starts—it was clearly going to be a difficult post, given the world financial turmoil and German political upheaval—the position went to William Dodd, a chairman of the Department of History at the University of Chicago and biographer (and friend) of Woodrow Wilson. Using diaries and letters, Erik Larson relates the experiences of Dodd and his family, primarily his daughter, Martha, during Dodd’s 1933-1937 tenure.

Those were tumultuous years indeed in Germany. Once in power, the Nazis reneged on the Versailles Treaty’s onerous war repayment provisions; rebuilt the country’s armed forces; and passed laws limiting and ultimately denying citizenship rights of Jewish citizens. The Night of the Long Knives occurred during the Dodds’ stay in Germany, and that’s essentially where the story ends. Larson makes no bones about what he is doing. In his introduction, he says, “I made no effort in these pages to write another grand history of the age.” Instead, he tells of drives in the country and dinner parties, diplomatic receptions and Nazi Party rallies.

Although both Dodd children (they were already adults in their 20s) moved to Germany with their parents, Larson focuses on William Dodd, the ambassador, and his daughter, Martha. I suspect this is because both of them left substantial amounts of documentary material, unlike the mother and son. (Confusingly, both children were named after their parents. Larson refers to the son, who barely appears in the book, as Billy, and the mother, who is mostly a cipher, though one with an evident backbone, as Mattie.) At first the family was enchanted with the evident prosperity and lovely countryside of Germany. As time passed, evidence of Nazi brutality became impossible to ignore; early in their stay, the two Dodd children witnessed the thuggish humiliation of a German woman engaged to a Jew.

Dodd was one of the few US diplomats to urge that the world engage, rather than ignore or appease, Hitler. Unlike most other members of the diplomatic service at the time, he was not independently wealthy, and he tried to live within his salary as US Ambassador. These acts did nothing to endear him to his superiors at home, or to his staff at the embassy. At the same time, both his children flirted with Soviet communism, and Martha had a long affair with an NKVD operative. Both children’s lives were dominated, in the end, by their actions in Germany during these years. Martha and her husband later fled the US rather than testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Billy’s activities had also drawn the attention of HUAC; in the 1940s he was declared “unfit” for employment by the federal government, when he was working for the Federal Communications Committee.

This is a difficult story, which Larson tells well, as far as he goes. Larson spends 90% of the book on the Dodds’ first year in Berlin, finishing up the next three and a half years in a handful of pages. It’s not clear whether he petered out or his sources did. But that first year of Nazi power comes alive in vivid and often grotesque detail. It makes for an entertaining read, but will leave the enquiring reader curious to know more. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics here.

The New York Transit Museum has announced the start of an informal discussion series, Problem Solvers, hosted by Ben Kabak, founder of the blog Second Avenue Sagas. The free series begins on Wednesday, February 1 at 6:30 pm and will take an intimate look at the most interesting people working behind-the-scenes to operate the city’s century-old transit system.

Mr. Kabak’s first guest is Sarah Kaufman, who led the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s open data program. As an innovative and pragmatic leader within the MTA, Ms. Kaufman worked to put the agency on the fast track to the digital age, collaborating with third-party software developers to improve public access to transit data. Ms. Kaufman recently joined NYU Wagner’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management. The hour-long program includes audience Q & A.

Problem Solvers continues on April 25th when Mr. Kabak, dubbed “The Transit Authority” by the Village Voice, will engage a second interviewee in informal conversation at the Transit Museum.

Doors open at 6 pm; program begins at 6:30. Guests are invited to explore the Museum prior to the start of the program. Light refreshments will be served.

What: Free! Problem Solvers discussion series debut

Who: Host Ben Kabak (Second Ave. Sagas) with guest Sarah Kaufman

When: Wednesday, February 1, 6:30 pm (doors open at 6 pm)

Where: New York Transit Museum, inside the subway station at the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn. General information (718) 694-1600 or click on this link.

Brendan and Evelyn meet as young students. Evelyn, an American studying at Oxford, is taking a week’s vacation in Cornwall before she heads home. Brendan is also at Oxford, but lets Evelyn think he is merely a local. The two, both misfits in their own families, start to fall in love after spending the better part of a week together. Their love of a Cornish myth (a local Gawain and the Green Knight predecessor) unites them, yet each keeps a secret, and soon they go their separate ways. They meet again many years later. Oh, and they might possibly be the reincarnated version of the lovers in the myth.

This romance is published as an accordion book, with Brendan’s story told at one end, and, when you turn the book around, Evelyn’s from the other. An accordion book telling a story from two characters’ points of view poses a conundrum for the reader: whose side to read first? After reading the first side, the reader has to wonder: will reading the other side resolve the mysteries or even add anything to the story? This slight book by Theodora Goss succeeds in the first but I must admit I did not find the story so interesting that I was excited about reading it again. A gap of a few days made a difference.

Accordion books are more common in other cultures (here’s a Burmese astrology handbook) and I was at first concerned that the binding was a gimmick intended to cover a weak structure. The story works, and there’s a nice parallel to the Cornish myth, with a love triangle that reverberates down the centuries. This is a very short book, less than 100 pages for both characters, so don’t plan for it to take you through an airplane trip. It is beautifully illustrated by Scott McKowen and comes in a beautiful, uncluttered box.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. And check out my metrics blog.

The New York Transit Museum and Extreme Kids & Crew invite families with children who have special needs to visit the Transit Museum on Sunday, January 22 for a Special Day for Special Kids. Families with special needs kids receive free admission to the Museum between 10 am and 11 am, with a 50% discount thereafter when the Museum opens to the general public.

A variety of transit-themed activities are scheduled throughout the day including an art project using old metrocards, a scavenger hunt on the Museum’s platform level and a musical performance by the Brooklyn-based M Shanghai String Band. In addition, a “Quiet Room” for special needs families will be available from 10 am to 2 pm as a place to take a break from the excitement.

The Transit Museum offers a number of programs for special needs children, including guided programs for school and camp groups, travel training to learn independent travel on the subways, and the Subway Sleuths Afterschool Program where children on the autism spectrum practice social skills while working together on projects about subway history. Extreme Kids & Crew is a parent-run, non-profit organization that provides a safe sensory space where Brooklyn’s kids with disabilities and their families can gather to play, teach, learn, sing, sprawl and be.

The New York Transit Museum is located at the corner of Boerum Place & Schermerhorn Streets in Brooklyn. For general information, call  (718) 694-1600  or visit the website.

There were so many great releases towards the end of 2011, so if you have missed this gem I’ll give you a pass.  But it’s time to catch up!  (Ahk-toong Bay-bi) Covered is a tribute to U2‘s classic Achtung Baby LP from 1991. The original is one of my favorite albums ever, so I was a bit worried about this… but the talent lineup on it is incredible.

By the way, this was originally available only in the UK, it came with an issue of Q magazine. In the US, you can download it at iTunes, with proceeds going towards Concern, an organization dedicated to working with the world’s poorest people to improve their lives.

The album starts out with Nine Inch Nails covering “Zoo Station,” which is surprising on several levels. One, I thought Trent Reznor was done with NIN.  I guess not?  Second, I thought he didn’t like U2, although I guess if he liked any of their albums, it would be this one (when it came out, I thought it sounded like U2 were influenced by NIN’s debut, 1989′s Pretty Hate Machine). Third, NIN’s versions is so different.  It’s much more subtle, and a bit creepier than U2′s.

Patti Smith, one of U2′s biggest influences, honors them with her piano based cover of “Until The End Of The World.” Accompanied by her sons on piano and guitar, and a bass player, it’s much different and more sober, and maybe more sad, than the original.

Garbage, who opened for U2, makes their return to active duty with “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?”  Like U2 during this era, Garbage wrestle with getting soul into the intersection of humans playing instruments and programmed computer music.  Few do it well, but U2 and Garbage both did. I look forward to hearing Garbage’s comeback album.

Depeche Mode, a peer of U2′s, picked the perfect song for themselves with “So Cruel.” It’s interesting to hear them cover something from this era, since Achtung Baby (and Zooropa and Pop) are the closest U2 came to Depeche Mode’s electronic sound. I’ve always thought that this is one of U2′s most underrated songs (if I remember correctly, it’s the only song from the album they didn’t play on the tour).  Depeche Mode really put their own spin on it.

Friend of U2 Gavin Friday takes one of my favorites, “The Fly,” and makes it sound a bit sneakier.  It’s a bit more electronic, and like NIN’s “Zoo Station,” mostly strips The Edge‘s badass riff from the song.  It almost sounds like he’s covering a remix. It’s very cool though.

One of my favorite artists, Jack White closes the album with a very emotional “Love Is Blindness,” the closest thing to a blues song U2 has ever done.  The Edge wrote that one when he was going through a divorce, and sadly, Jack just went through one. He brings a lot of sorrow to the song,  it’s the highlight of the album for me, and one of the best songs of 2011.

I don’t love every song on the album, and of course you can just buy the songs you like, but because the money goes to a worthy cause, I downloaded the whole thing.

Source: No Expiration - a blog about timeless music
http://noexpiration.blogspot.com/2012/01/ahk-toong-bay-bi-covered-reviewed.html

Before they became independent countries in the 20th century, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and parts of Poland and Ukraine were territories, or provinces, or sometimes principalities, of the Habsburg empire. The Habsburg family was large and connected, all the more so because cousins often married. (A Habsburg sits on the throne of Spain today.) Habsburg Archdukes governed the various provinces under the Emperor. This book tells the story of one scion of the branch that governed Poland, or tried to. Wilhelm, born in 1948, rejected his father’s efforts to make him and his siblings Polish, and threw his lot in with the Ukrainians.

This was not a simple thing to do, given the complexities of 20th century central-European politics. It was a Habsburg Archduke who was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914. Wilhelm served in the Habsburg army during that war, then became involved in Ukrainian politics, hoping to become king of an independent Ukraine. The war ended the Habsburg empire, and Wilhelm spent the interwar years in France, until he was forced to leave after a scandal, and then Austria. He flirted with fascism, and ultimately took up the cause of Ukrainian nationalism once again. After the war, once the Soviets moved in, he was arrested in Vienna and died in Soviet custody.

Snyder traces the development and clashes of nationalism, imperial ambition, religion and ethnicity, showing how they played out in Europe through the century. He makes a confusing and complex history extremely clear. Snyder suggests it is not far-fetched to think of modern Europe as fulfilling Habsburg ideas. Indeed, Otto von Habsburg, whose father was the last Habsburg emperor, was a member of the European Parliament for 20 years. He died in 2011, at the age of 98. The Central and Eastern European history before World War II was something of a blank for me, and this book does an admirable job of filling it in. Snyder’s most recent book is called “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.”

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog here about metrics.

What’s your favorite? Let us know in the comments. Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com.

In “This Beautiful Life” Helen Schulman takes on a story of youthful illusion and treachery. The Bergamots, mother, father, teenaged son and kindergarten daughter, move to New York City from Ithaca, New York. Richard, the father, has taken on a high-profile job overseeing the development of an area of Harlem by a near-by world-class university. Jake, 15 ½ and Coco, 6, attend the Upper and Lower Divisions, respectively, of the Wildwood School. Liz, the mother, manages everyone’s lives. One night, Jake stays up in Riverdale, where the Upper School is located, to attend a party. The party is unchaperoned, and Jake hooks up with a girl a couple of years younger than he is. After the party, she sends him an explicit video that, because of Jake, goes viral. The many ensuing complications put the marriage and all the relationships in the family to the test.

Schulman does a tremendous job of showing the variety of ways the family’s relationships are found wanting. Liz realizes over and over the different ways in which she may have failed her kids, while Richard, the father, retreats into a hearty but increasingly fragile vision of success. Liz, a latecomer to the rarefied world of New York City private schools, often fails to understand the ambiguous cues for parental behavior. Schulman also suggests, early on, that there was a moment when Liz could have prevented the calamity, but, distracted by a hangover and Coco’s needs, does not.

Another motif is the wide gap between New York City’s haves and its have-mores. The Bergamots are not themselves in the 1%; Liz is a stay-at-home mom (albeit one with a Ph.D. in art history) and Richard works for a not-for-profit university. Through the children’s school, they meet and mingle with the 1%. Late in the book, Richard has a chance to move to an investment banking firm. Schulman explicitly evokes “The Great Gatsby” (among other ironies, the 13-year-old is named Daisy), perhaps best when Liz stands on an East Side block waiting for Coco to be released from kindergarten for the day. The book is a telling illustration of one of “Gatsby’s” great lessons, that a moment of carelessness can change several people’s lives forever.

“This Beautiful Life” offers a persuasive view of a particular swath of New York City life. Is it too close for comfort? Too far away to be credible? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics.

Have you ever stayed in a hotel where travellers and guests swapped and shared novels and guides? I have, and been grateful for a great book left behind by an earlier visitor. Now some people in Madison, Wisconsin have extended the idea. Little Free Libraries are free-standing outdoor bookcases where neighbors can share and exchange books. They are often themed, and library stewards agree to maintain them.

You can buy one or design and build your own, and designs range from simple to fanciful. The upper illustration, from the Little Free Library site, is the first one, located in Wisconsin. There’s a Facebook page too. Small presses have participated, supplying books. And yes, there’s a Little Free Library in Brooklyn – go to the Little Free Libraries Map page to find it. Better yet, start your own! And if you do, let us know about it.

 A couple of years ago, EMI Records orchestrated what was probably the biggest reissue campaign ever: putting out the remastered Beatles catalog. This year, they’re rolling out the remastered Pink Floyd catalog.  They are very good at this kind of thing.

Floyd’s catalog has been reissued before, but this is the first time it is being remastered (I think).  If you want  Pink Floyd’s albums, straight up with no bonus tracks, buy the new reissues.  You can actually buy the entire catalog of studio albums (but not live albums) for about $180 via the Discovery box set.  (Full disclosure: I got all of the reissues from the label, but not as the box set, just as individual CDs.)

The sound is incredible and with Pink Floyd, fidelity is important. If you have these versions, you won’t ever need anything else, unless you want to dive deeper with expanded editions.

So far, two of their albums have been expanded in two different forms, which is how it’s done these days (see recent reissues by U2, Nirvana and The Rolling Stones).  The albums that have been expanded have “Experience” (2 CD sets with a disc of extras) and “Immersion” versions (much more lavish editions).

I bought a copy of the “Experience” version of 1973′s Dark Side of The Moon for $25. The second disc is a live concert recorded at The Empire Pool in Wembley in 1974, and features the band performing Dark Side from start to finish.  It was cool to hear them reproduce the album in a more raw form – they had not yet become a completely slick stadium band. The “Immersion” version costs over $100 and has lots of extras that I didn’t really want: DVD-audio, Blu-Ray audio, 5.1 remixes, surround sound remixes.  There are some video and audio elements that I was interested in, but not enough to spend the extra $75, given how many other reissues I’ve gotten this season.

I also bought a copy of the “Experience” version of 1975′s Wish You Were Here for $25.  The second disc features a bunch of extras: a live version of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (parts 1 -6),” as well as “Raving and Drooling” and “You’ve Got To Be Crazy,” songs which ended up morphing into tunes from their next album, Animals. But my favorite extra is an alternate version of the title track featuring jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli.

Honestly, when I first heard about this reissue campaign, I was kind of ambivalent about the prospect of a Pink Floyd reissue containing any extras. Their classic albums seem so perfect that I wouldn’t change a thing. And Floyd’s mystique is such that, I don’t want to see anything more than what they reveal.  On the other hand, the live Dark Side is pretty awesome, as are some of the Wish You Were Here extras.  I know that next year, they are going to do expanded editions of The Wall, and I’m curious what the extras will be. I’ve heard that they may also be doing an expanded Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, and I guess if there’s unreleased Syd Barrett material, it would be cool to hear it.

Source: No Expiration - a blog about timeless music
http://noexpiration.blogspot.com/2011/12/pink-floyd-reissues-final-word-on-floyd.html

I am more than a little bit tired of Canadian pop stars because they are seriously wack. When was the last time Canada sent us a decent musical artist???? Think back. WAY back. It was Corey Hart or maybe early Bryan Adams. Everything since then? WACK.

I could’ve responded with Arcade Fire as a counter-example, but instead chose Kathleen Edwards doing her hockey song, “You Get the Glory, I Make the Dough.” My friend’s response was:

And Claude Scales, in the time that I’ve known you I’ve found that you have SUPERB taste in music, but this Kathleen Edwards? She lost me at the “I’m a Ford Tempo, you’re a Ma[s]erati…” No. Just, no. I’m a purist; I like my country music sung by folks below the Mason Dixon line.

Well, being an Air Force brat, I spent much of my childhood and youth below the Mason Dixon line, but my earliest memories of country music were from the radio at my grandmother’s in Pennsylvania, or on the road across Ohio on the way to my father’s family home in Indiana.

And, yes, as I learned later in life, there was country music north of the border as well. One of the most admired country music stars of the 1950s and ’60s, Hank Snow, was born and raised in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. Geologically speaking Nova Scotia is part of Appalachia; it would seem to be culturally as well.

The clip above (thanks to PeterRabbit59) shows Hank, with the Rainbow Ranch Boys, doing “I’m Moving On.” You do have to endure a lengthy introduction by a guy from Arkansas who admits to having been influenced by Hank (and who, near the beginning of his talk, seems inexplicably to refer to Hank as a “lady”; well, he does wear a pink Nudie suit).

I can’t give up on Ottawa’s favorite daughter, Kathleen Edwards, either. Here she is (courtesy of building55), doing what I think is a first-rate country-rock song, “Change the Sheets,” at Stephen Talkhouse, Amagansett, Long Island, July 17, 2010.

k.d. lang (she spells her name in all lowercase) is from the high plains of eastern Alberta, and her songs sound as expansive as that wide-open country. Listen to “Big, Big Love,” courtesy of TheLangChannel.

I could go on, but I’ll close with “Early Morning Rain,” a song that touches on many country music themes: getting drunk, riding freight trains, longing for an absent lover. It’s performed here by Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker, who begin with some talk about the breakup of their long marriage and musical partnership, which hasn’t affected their friendship or ability to sing together. They’re joined on the last verse by the song’s author, Gordon Lightfoot (forgive me, Lester Bangs). Ian and Sylvia, and Lightfoot, are usually classified as “folk” musicians, but, heck, it’s a fine line.

I walked down there and ended up

In one of them coffee-houses on the block

Got on the stage to sing and play

Man there said, “Come back some other day

You sound like a hillbilly

We want folk singers here”

–Bob Dylan, “Talkin’ New York”

Source: Self-Absorbed Boomer
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Tom Waits is amazing. And so is his latest album, Bad As Me. I’m a big fan of Tom’s most recent records, the ones he’s done since signing to Epitaph Records‘ Anti- label. My favorite Waits album is 1999′s Mule Variations.  That’s pretty much when I got into him.  I was kind of prompted to check out his music because of his association with one of my favorite bands, Primus (he does guest vocals on “Tommy The Cat”). From Mule Variations, I went back and investigated his Elektra and Island years. Wow, what a body of work.  He kind of gets weirder as he gets older, which is the opposite of most artists. But his songs always pack a punch.

Anyway, Bad As Me is just classic. It seems to touch on all the different phases of his career.  The opening track, “Chicago,” fits in with his music from the past decade or so, it sounds like it could have been on Mule Variations. “Hell Broke Luce” reminds me of his most bizarre era, the early ’90s when he did Bone Machine and The Black Rider. But some of the ballads, like “New Year’s Eve” has that boozy, last-call sound from his earliest records.  But despite the stylistic diversity, the album still feels like it has a real continuity, it has a real flow to it.

There are so many great songs here: I love “Chicago” and “New Year’s Eve.”  ”Talking At The Same Time” is awesome, Tom sings in that otherworldly falsetto.  You never know what year it is when you hear a Tom Waits song, but when he sings, “Well, the dog is in the kitchen/and the war drags on/The trees wait by the freeway/all the money is gone,” well, what feels more 2011 than that?

My two favorite moments come toward the end of the album.  I love “Satisfied,” which is kind of a 60-something’s answer to “Satisfaction.” When he sings, “Now Mr. Jagger, Mr. Richards, I will scratch where I’ve been itching,” it’s cool, punk rock and defiant. Upping the cool ante, though, is the fact that Keith Richards is playing guitar on the song. (Les Claypool from Primus is playing bass on the track: how many artists could get members of those bands on one album, much less one song?). The next song is my other favorite, and it also features Mr. Richards. “Last Leaf” holds up with any of his ballads, “Ol’ 55,” “Jersey Girl,” whatever you want to name.  Keith is the perfect foil for Tom on this song and this album.  In fact, I’m thinking that if Mr. Jagger doesn’t get a Stones tour together, Keith should join Tom’s touring band.

Source: No Expiration - a blog about timeless music
http://noexpiration.blogspot.com/2011/12/tom-waits-bad-as-me.html

What to make of this curious book, Ann Beattie’s beautifully written new release? There’s clearly a lot of imagination at work here, and the work is based on significant research. But, Beattie points out, “[B]ooks are always about the author, however well or badly hidden, as well as being about the books’ subject.” Beattie uses her various motifs–nicknames, dialogue, character, description–as jumping-off points for writerly exegeses. The book carries as its epigraph an anecdote about the 1960 Nixon campaign bus leaving Mrs. Nixon behind, and then raises questions. Did the need to collect Mrs. Nixon irritate the candidate? Were there repercussions for the staffer who told the driver to move out? What did Mrs. Nixon have to say about it? Whether Beattie answers the questions she raises, or even intended to answer them, is another story.

There’s no plot to summarize. Beattie first lists “Mrs. Nixon’s Nicknames, Including her Code Name as First Lady,” then goes on to tell a story about her uncommunicativeness during the 1968 presidential campaign, but suggests several possible lines of what she might have been thinking. The next chapter is an extended discussion on the importance of stories in conveying a character, as if Beattie were synthesizing several of her best lectures. Other scenes—Mrs. Nixon’s mother’s early death, Pat Nixon’s community theatre experiences—are jumping off points for further discussions of writers and writing. When you think about it, the arrangement makes sense. It’s just that it tells us more about Beattie than about Mrs. Nixon. And that, ultimately, is the point.

So the book is a little bit of memoir, a lot of reflections on writers and writing, and some fictional interpolations. In her introduction, Beattie says, “I imagine dialogue to which I had no access . . .In some cases, factual events are used only as points of departure, which should become clear; those times I write fiction will be recognizable as such.” Well, not quite. In my favorite episode, My Meeting with Mrs. Nixon, Beattie describes a perfectly plausible chance meeting in the shoe department of Woodward & Lothrop.

The Vietnam War was going on and on and on. That totally left my mind, that day. There seemed no larger context than Mrs. Nixon and Tricia and their coats and bags and . . . the fact that she was trying on the same shoes I was! These were not Mrs. Nixon shoes . . .

“No?” she said, turning her foot sideways.

She was speaking to me. And I was sitting there with the same shoes on both feet, not standing to try them out because I was so mesmerized by her.

“We wore these in the forties, didn’t we?” she said to my mother.
. . .
A Secret Service agent picked up Tricia’s bag. Tricia looked at him briefly, wondering if he was hinting that they should leave. He stood there with the bag. Then Mrs. Nixon noticed what Tricia was noticing while at the same time noticing that we, too, looked at him, puzzled. And then all four of us smiled, understanding that this was a man who’d had enough of shopping. He just wanted to go.

It’s plausible, two women shopping with their daughters. It’s set just long enough ago that even though you think that the Secret Service would shut down the entire store now, then they might not have. There are a lot of details. And the bonding of the four women over the impatience of the male Secret Service agent is brilliant.

Except that the next chapter is headed “I Didn’t Meet Her.” And begins: “But you wanted me to have met her, didn’t you?” And she’s right, I did. That playful, feminine story humanized the silent Mrs. Nixon in a way that nothing else I’ve read or remember really has. It’s a useful lesson in critical reading and successful writing.

Mrs. Nixon remains an enigma at the end of the book; Ann Beattie less so. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. And check out my metrics blog.

Digital DUMBO would like to wish you a very Happy Holiday Season! Instead of having an event in the month of December, we would like to invite you to give a small donation to One Laptop Per Child, a non-profit committed to giving laptops to the world’s poorest children to connect them to the world and to a brighter future.

There are two ways to give:

1) Purchase a Digital DUMBO Brooklyn Industries T-Shirt and we’ll donate 20% of the proceeds to OLPC. Donate Now!

2) Donate directly on the OLPC website. Donate Now!

Source: Digital DUMBO
http://www.digitaldumbo.com/digital-dumbo-invites-you-to-give-the-gift-of-digital-this-holiday-season/

It’s not easy to assemble a group of professional musicians, rehearse, and perform a complex musical work like Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio,” and it’s even harder to do it during the holiday season, but that’s precisely what Edward Houser managed on Sunday, December 11. The concert, held appropriately enough in the supple acoustics of the Zion German Evangelical Lutheran Church on Henry Street, was a splendid neighborhood treat.

The chamber chorus and orchestra (17 singers, 20 instruments) produced a rich, full sound. Mechanical issues made the ensemble a little shaky at first, but as the performers relaxed the ensemble grew stronger. The lovely chorale “Ehre sei dir, Gott, gesungen” best illustrated the group’s ability to display the technical intricacies of the music. Arias went to different singers; the variety of soloists meant a variety of sounds and styles, and each was interesting. Several soloists, in particular the bass James Ioelu and the mezzo-soprano Raehann Bryce-Davis, were outstanding. Among the musicians, Peter Velikonja, the first oboeist, James Grasek, violin, and Paul Dwyer, cello and continuo were stalwarts.

Edward Houser has promised to make Bach in the Heights a regular event. Sign up for the mailing list at bachintheheights@yahoo.com, or follow Bach in the Heights on Facebook and Twitter (@BachinBrooklyn) for more information.

Lowell Lake, just graduated from Stanford University in the early 1960s, gets married right after college graduation. On a whim, he turns down a graduate scholarship to Berkeley, and moves with his new wife to New York City. He tries writing a novel; when that doesn’t work out, he becomes the managing editor of a plumbing trade publication. He drifts apart from his wife, but saves his money for several years.

And in about 1970 he buys a house in Brooklyn. The house, a crumbling mansion on the Fort Greene section of Washington Avenue, is home to any number of poor tenants: drug users, illegal immigrants, and more. Despite his discomfort as the rare white man walking the streets of Fort Greene, Lowell single-handedly takes on the decay of New York. He throws out the many tenants. He demolishes partitions, and hires contractors to strip and restore the house. Obsessed with his house, Lowell tries to protect it from squatters. Disasters, only some of them predictable to homeowners, ensue.

Reading the book now, 40 years after its publication, when Brooklyn is hip and New York City has rebounded, is revelatory. Davis enmeshes the reader in Lowell’s pioneering efforts at gentrification. He describes but doesn’t comment on Lowell’s casual displacement of poor black and Hispanic tenants. Davis paints a lovely portrait of a mid-century New York woman, Lowell’s mother-in-law (to be, when we meet her). It’s clear to us she’s Jewish, but Lowell misses that entirely. It’s as good a portrait of a member of an oblivious majority culture as I’ve read. In his introduction, Jonathan Lethem, who grew up down the street from Davis, says that the early Brownstoners “set the groundwork for the disaster and triumph of Brooklyn’s slow-motion gentrification, so full of social implications and ethical paradoxes.” We’re still living with the ramifications.

No matter how or where we develop—Atlantic Yards, downtown Brooklyn, Fourth Avenue—someone is going to be displaced. On the other hand, we get to live here. Please read the book first. Then discuss in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. And check out my other blog about metrics.

In this episode of Crossing Dumbo, Blue Barn Pictures interviews Dumbo based artist Stefan Killen, a graphic designer and pinhole photographer. Pinhole photography involves a handmade pinhole camera, a small cardboard box wrapped in black plastic and electrical tape without a lens. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. The smaller the hole, the sharper the image, but the dimmer the projected image. Mr. Killen says, “There’s a quality of chaos and messiness in pinhole photography that I really like.” Growing up in Zurich Switzerland, Mr. Killen says, “the Swiss half of me is a graphic designer, and has to have everything to the pixel. The other half of me is American, artistically inclined, and loves pinhole photography for the messiness in it.“

Crossing Dumbo, a web series of video portraits of artists, entrepreneurs and residents in Dumbo Brooklyn. This is a collaboration between DumboNYC and our talented friends over at Blue Barn Pictures. Different directors from Blue Barn Pictures, a creative content agency, bring their own approach to each interview to create a distinct profile of the person being interviewed and place them within the Dumbo community. Blue Barn Pictures truly love what they do and support the community in a positive way, and for that we’re grateful to have them be a part of Dumbo.

{DumboNYC.com/category/crossing-dumbo/}

Source: Dumbo NYC
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